


remember me to one who lives there

by sinagtala (strikinglight)



Series: Squad Levi Week 2k15 [3]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: F/M, Growing Up Together, Love Letters, Non-Linear Narrative, Singing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-19
Updated: 2015-09-19
Packaged: 2018-04-21 10:46:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4826213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strikinglight/pseuds/sinagtala
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Even out in the field all he can think about is the scent of those herbs in their song, sweet and earthy, clinging to her hands and clothes and hair. // Erd and his girl. Many letters, and the occasional visitation. Nonlinear timeline.</p>
            </blockquote>





	remember me to one who lives there

**Author's Note:**

> Day 5 offering for [Squad Levi Week](http://squadleviweek.tumblr.com). Prompt: Dedication.
> 
> The song Liesel sings is the traditional English ballad, ["Scarborough Fair."](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BakWVXHSug)

When it begins, he’s only a boy, and she’s just  _the singing girl_ —a voice he hears echoing through the air between their two houses on some mornings, a rippling, liquid sound.

 _Are you going to Scarborough Fair?_ The words seem to slip delicately through the woodwork. They tiptoe right behind him as he goes about his chores.  _Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme._

There’s a face attached to that voice, and a name. He doesn’t know about either of those things yet, only that he’s begun to catch himself humming along, struggling to pick out the notes on his guitar, make the same sounds.

 

* * *

 

 _Liesel,_  he writes.  _We got a few new yearlings today. I’m excited to help Ness break them in for riding—they’ve got good legs, and even better eyes. Nice and bright._

_He says not to spoil them with too much food, but I know he always gives them extra oats when I’m not looking. What do you think I should name them?_

 

* * *

 

“Lay your hand flat,” he says, giving her the sugar cube he’s just produced from his pocket. “Now put it out, like this—don’t worry, she’s a good girl. She won’t bite.”

His horse snuffles softly when she extends her hand, all warm breath and hay-smell, and presses its nose into the outstretched palm. He’s holding her around the wrist gently to keep it steady, but his eyes are on her face so he can watch it come alive, the slow move from trepidation to surprise to delight, like dawn.

“What’s her name?” she asks, running her free hand down the horse’s neck, murmuring soft noises of admiration at the smooth, dark coat, the play of the afternoon sunlight on the black mane.

“Guess,” he tells her. “Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, or Thyme?”

It’s a bad joke, and earns him a slap to the arm, her palm whipcracking against the leather of his sleeve. He winces—she was being so gentle with the damn horse not twenty seconds ago, and they had only just met.

 

* * *

 

 _Things are a little gloomy in the garden from all this rain,_  she writes,  _but the herbs are hanging in there. They have a lot of fight in them still. You’d be proud of them, I think. I almost don’t want to pick them and use them to cook with._

_I’ve been bored, so I’m also working on a little song. Your mother likes it—she says it helps her sleep._

 

* * *

 

The day after his graduation ceremony, he rides up to her house to find her already standing in the doorway. She’s taller than he remembers. Her hair’s longer, too.

“You’re growing a beard,” she remarks as he dismounts, before he can even say hello.

There’s an arch to her eyebrows, disbelieving, and her lips are pursed over an unsaid question—like she wants to ask the young man in front of her where the past three years went, what happened to her gangly boy.

He grasps her by the wrist and rubs her hand against his chin. The question disappears and is replaced instead by a piercing, high-pitched little sound, something somewhere between a giggle and a shriek.

 

* * *

 

 _Lest you worry that all our captain makes us do is clean the barracks,_ he writes,  _I just wanted to let you know that we’re heading out beyond the walls the day after tomorrow._

_You know I have the strongest guys—and girl, she’s the scariest of all—in the Corps at my back, so don’t you lose any sleep over it, all right?_

_Do you know how blue the sky looks out there, Liesel? It’s enough to make you forget there even are titans, almost._

 

* * *

 

“You should find someone to marry.” It feels foul to say it, especially like this, when she’s standing walled in by his arms and his lips are pressed against her forehead, so the words fall right against her skin, staining. “We’re not kids anymore.”

It’s not anything close to what he wants to tell her—which is that even out in the field all he can think about is the scent of those herbs in their song, sweet and earthy, clinging to her hands and clothes and hair. Not by miles. But it’s what she needs to hear. 

“I want you to be happy,” he says when she doesn’t answer. 

She moves her lips against his shoulder, and her voice when it finally comes free of the confines of her throat is thick, strangled.

“Aren’t you going to ask me what I want?”

Her fingers clench around the back of his shirt, tightly enough to tear the fabric.

(When he thinks about it later, he’ll realize that this was the first and last time she ever let him see her cry.)

 

* * *

 

 _But enough about me,_  he writes.  _I want to know how you are._

 

* * *

 

The first gift he ever gives her is his guitar, the day he departs for the training base. He pushes it into her arms and she’s staring at him again like she can’t believe what she’s holding—like he’s reached into his chest and plucked out his heart.

“Get some practice in while I’m gone,” he says. He is fourteen and well aware that at this point his life is an eyeblink, with barely any living to speak of having been done, but his hands still feel heavy where they linger over hers, reluctant to leave such a precious thing behind. “Soon you probably won’t even need me to play for you anymore.”

Her only answer is to lean across the wood and kiss him. It’s a first kiss for both of them, and—he doesn’t want to think about this, not when her lips meet his so softly it’s hard to breathe, not when his nose bumps against hers and he can feel her laugh right up against his face—maybe the only one they’ll ever share, you can never tell. It certainly feels like the longest.

 

* * *

 

 _I’ve been practicing,_  she writes.  _But I don’t have your monster hands and the neck is kind of on the wide side, so I haven’t gotten all the chords right._

_Do you still remember how to play?_

 

* * *

 

“I’m going to go post these to my dad.” Petra’s already shrugging her cloak on and halfway out the door, but she turns back quickly, to call to him over her shoulder. “Is there anything you want me to send?”

“Just this,” he answers, comes forward and presses a thin white envelope in among the others in her hand. “You know the address.”

“Roger,” she says. Then she smiles, and bumps her fist lightly against his.

 

* * *

 

 _I feel sorry for Petra,_  she writes.  _Having to babysit all of you. At least you all split the housework equally, I guess._

_Here’s the potato stew recipe you asked for, for the next time she puts you on cooking duty. Don’t give her any grief._

 

* * *

 

She’s quiet for a long time, her fingers skimming slowly over the wings on his sleeve, following the lines sideward and up. He doesn’t need to tell her what they mean. She already knows.

“Is this all right with you?” he asks.

Technically, he doesn’t need to ask for her permission; he doesn’t belong to her, not really. And she shouldn’t belong to him either. He’s known that since he was a boy, and his letters to her were just little notes hastily scrawled on scrap paper from the trainees’ classroom, that it was a bad idea to write home to her, to keep writing, and yet—

“When you go into battle,” she asks back, like she knows it’s not even a real question, “do you hate what’s in front of you?”

Her voice is a mere whisper, her face in the candlelight smooth and nearly expressionless, eyes seeing past him, past their town, past the walls all the way out into the vast, impossible beyond that he’ll ride out into every day for the rest of his life. His hand closes over hers, turns it palm up as if he’s studying the lines there.

“I love what’s behind me,” he says.

 

* * *

 

 _They asked to see your picture today,_  he writes.  _Prettiest girl in town, I said. Like the sun and the stars, and all that. And now I bet I’ve completely embarrassed you._

 

* * *

 

“You could go home, Erd,” Gunther tells him. His gaze is fixed not on Erd’s face but his breast pocket, penetrating, sketching out the outline of a flat box small enough to fit in a palm. “We could ask the captain to request an honorable discharge.”

“I’m not that kind of man,” he says, tries to affect his usual easy smile. “Besides, I can’t be out of work; do you know how much weddings cost?”

(He doesn’t think she’d still have him, anyway, if he walked out on his duty.)

 

* * *

 

 _I’m on the mend now,_  she writes.  _My throat was so sore for a while. I guess there’s a bug going around. You all stay well, okay?_

 _I’ve been drinking the medicine you sent, but no songs for a while, it seems._

_I’m sure I’ll have my voice back next time you come around, though._

 

* * *

 

The day he finally pushes open the window, almost a month of listening and guitar-tuning since he first heard the song, is the first time in his life that he ever feels brave.

“Remember me to one who lives there,” he sings to her across the way. “She was once a true love of mine.”

His voice is cracking and shaky and likely loud enough for anyone passing below to hear, but she stops sweeping the floor and stares at him in a haze of such charming confusion through her own window that he doesn’t care.

“What’s your name?” he says to the glass.

She blinks. It’s like her voice has suddenly taken wing and disappeared.  _Come back,_  he wants to call after it.  _Come back._

Then she tilts her head a little and points to herself, a question to which he nods in answer, grinning.

Her cheeks flush, and it’s like a lamp being lit inside her—he can feel an answering warmth suddenly on his own face—before she presses a finger against the window, drags it down to make a standing line.

_L-I-E-S-E-L. Liesel. Liesel._

Inside his head, the word becomes a new song.

 

* * *

 

 _I’ve been thinking of you,_ he writes.  _Would it be too much to ask you to wait a little longer? I want the next time I come through your door to be for keeps._

 _Be well,_ he writes. _I miss you every day._

 _But I guess you probably already knew that_ _._


End file.
